French Startup Genesis AI Unveils Wheeled Robot Eno to Challenge Humanoid Norm

French robotics startup Genesis AI has unveiled Eno, its first general purpose robot, taking a different path from most competitors by skipping legs in favor of a wheeled base. The company says the design is meant to extend human capability rather than imitate human form, with commercial deployments planned by the end of 2026.

Eno features a foldable tower body that can adjust its height, along with two arms and hands the company says closely match human proportions. Genesis argues that for the environments it is targeting, factories, warehouses, hospitals, and hotels, the inability to climb stairs rarely matters, while a wheeled base keeps costs lower and movement more reliable than walking systems.

The robot runs on GENE, Genesis AI's own foundation model, which the company says allows Eno to understand goals, adjust to changing conditions, and complete tasks from start to finish rather than following rigid scripts. To train the robot, Genesis built sensor gloves that map human hand movement directly onto the robot's hands, an approach the company says is far cheaper than the teleoperation methods many rivals rely on.

Founded in early 2025 and backed by former Google CEO Eric Schmidt among other investors, Genesis AI has raised $105 million, one of the largest seed rounds in French tech history. The company plans to begin producing units and rolling out early customer deployments later this year, starting with logistics, manufacturing, and laboratory settings before expanding into hospitality and eventually homes.

The launch adds Genesis to a crowded and fast moving robotics race that includes humanoid focused rivals like Figure AI and Boston Dynamics, as companies worldwide compete to bring AI out of chatboxes and into physical machines capable of real world work.